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U.S. national indoor teams spend the day on the sand for beach handball

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Nico Mukendi of the U.S. national team handball squad attacks the goal during a game against Dallas during the American Open Beach Handball Championship in Gulf Shores, Ala., on Saturday, April 26, 2014. (Mark Inabinett/minabinett@al.com)

GULF SHORES, Alabama - For beach-goers walking past the Hangout this weekend, the American Open Beach Handball Championship probably provided their first exposure to the sport. The same could be said for at least one of the players, even though he's a member of the U.S. national team handball squad.

Nico Mukendi, a 19-year-old New Jersey native, came down with the U.S. men's team from Auburn, where it trains. The U.S. women's team also made the trip from Auburn to play. While an international competitor in the indoor version of handball, Saturday's game against a team from Dallas was Mukendi's first time on a beach handball court.

But he came ready to play.

"There's less contact in beach handball," Mukendi said, comparing the outdoor game to its indoor predecessor. "It's more comparable to basketball than team handball is. Also, in this version of handball, you can get two points for different shots like alley-oops and spins. If you do something fancy, you get rewarded for it."

Mukendi has adapted to handball before. A football wide receiver, basketball center and baseball center fielder at Hillsborough High School in New Jersey, Mukendi hadn't played team handball when he tried out for Team USA in 2012.

Obviously, he made the team, but Mukendi said the game was new, but not foreign, to him.

"It has all the elements of the most common American sports," he said. "You have throwing like baseball. There's a lot of contact like football. The movements are like basketball, so it's pretty appealing."

Beach handball lacks the element of team handball that Mukendi said he liked the best: physical contact.

Mukendi said he thought handball - team and beach - had a future in the United States, and his team could help by raising its profile and earning a spot in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil.

"We've got to win a lot of tournaments," he said. "The national team is going to the Pan-Am Championships in June in Uruguay. We're training for that every day. To make this sport grow, we've got to keep winning."